Russia has been accused of supplying Iran with an unhealthy tiger. Photograph: Mathieu Belanger/REUTERS

A weekly look at the Middle East, focusing on some of the issues and debates that you may have missed.

Tweetin' bout a revolution

I have spent a lot of time over the last few days following the Tunisian uprising on Twitter. With reporting on the ground severely curtailed by the authorities, with the western media slow to catch on to the significance of the events, and the Arab media – with a few rare exceptions such as al-Jazeera – nervously wondering what they can safely say, Twitter has become the first port of call for information.

Follow the hashtag #sidibouzid (after the town where the uprising started) and you'll find a jumbled collection of tweets in French, Arabic and English. At first it all looks very chaotic but, after a while, you start to recognise whose tweets are worth taking seriously and whose are not.

Where tweeters provide links, you can jump off to other places on the internet and often find confirmation of what they say: grainy videos of riots and demonstrations, and the dead and dying in hospitals. The Tunisian uprising may be under-reported, but it is not going unrecorded.

The discourse about Tunisia on Twitter is unlike any you would find in the mainstream Arab media where journalists, for the most part, are heavily constrained and constantly looking over their shoulders. It's free and uninhibited, much more like a private conversation among friends in some smoke-filled shisha cafe – except that it's happening on the internet and the whole world can listen in.

In a cafe conversation, of course, people say things off the top of their heads and mix fact with rumour and gossip. Normally, that wouldn't matter much, but because the Tunisia conversation has become such an important source of information – by default rather than design – here it matters rather a lot.

Last night, some of the Tunisia tweeters found themselves in the situation that journalists dread: getting a story seriously wrong. A rumour went round that the army had seized power and ousted the president. This was swiftly retweeted and also picked up by one or two bloggers.

Since then, there has been no confirmation and the coup story appears to be untrue – probably a case of people being too eager to believe the rumours they want to believe.

This morning, the over-hasty tweeters are licking their wounds and their mistake will no doubt fuel the argument that Twitter, and citizen journalism more generally, is unreliable as a source of information.

But it's not quite as simple as that. Unreliable in comparison to what? If you read the Tunisian newspapers and nothing else, you would scarcely be aware that an uprising is taking place. The country's citizen journalists, on the other hand, have been providing a much more complete picture.

Another point to keep in mind is that tweeters may get things wrong, but they are rarely wrong for long. Other tweeters can challenge them, often within minutes.

The beauty of Twitter and other social media is that they are largely self-correcting. The coup story was disputed and, before long, a consensus had been reached that there was probably nothing in it. The erring tweeters were embarrassed but graciously admitted their mistake. Which is more than can be said for the regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

Last April, Russia gave Iran two Siberian tigers – one male, one female – and Iran reciprocated by giving Russia two Persian leopards. The idea was that both countries would breed from them, then reintroduce them into the wild in areas where such animals have long been extinct.

Iranian conservationists were very dubious about the scheme, describing it as nothing more than a publicity stunt – which of course it was. With Iran in the diplomatic doghouse, even a minor gesture of international goodwill like this could be hailed as a comforting boost for the Tehran regime.

Earlier this month, though, the male tiger died in Tehran's Eram Zoo, and the recriminations began. Russia is now accused of supplying Iran with an unhealthy tiger, though some blame the zoo for allegedly feeding it on infected donkey meat. Either way, it's being treated as such a serious matter that a parliamentary inquiry has been announced.

For the Iranian media, this counts as a "safe" story – one where they can report freely (and let their imaginations run riot), with little risk of getting into trouble.

For example, some publications, such as Hamshahri, have used it as an excuse to raise the issue of Tehran's appalling pollution, since the tiger reportedly died of a respiratory illness – the suggestion being that he was accustomed to pure Siberian air and couldn't cope with the traffic fumes of the Iranian capital.

Others, more in line with the regime's religious ethos, have taken a moralistic approach, raising questions about the dead tiger's sexual proclivities. "Moral corruption of Russian tiger" was the headline in Tabnak – based on reports that the he had tested positive for feline immunodeficiency virus, the cats' equivalent of HIV.

The value of women

President Salih of Yemen is due to retire in 2013. At least, that's what the constitution says. But Salih, 64, has other ideas, and he's seeking to change the rules so that he can stand again, and again, and again.

To make this more palatable to the Yemeni public (and his international backers) he's offering to create 44 new seats in parliament, especially for women.

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that a court in the UAE had assessed the value of a woman's life at 100,000 dirhams ($17,663), half that of a man. So now we can do a bit more maths: if two women are equal to one ordinary man, 44 women are equal to one president-for-life.